The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [57]
New Thoughts and New Assumptions
The mind-set of the Renaissance never changed in the West once it was established. In the Middle East, with Islam, the medieval mind-set remained; along with hard results for the modern world. This clash of worlds is a clash of thought processes. In Islam, their medieval mental outlook places the worship of their god (Allah) over everything of this world. This mind-set encourages young men to detonate their explosive-laden selves in crowded market places. Islam never experienced a Renaissance, and the resulting ancient view of life is at odds with the post-Renaissance Western world. The West might have directed the Renaissance to Islam, but Islam’s swift and permanent Renaissance rejection blocked the acceptance of Europe’s new mindset forever.
In the Far East, China, Japan, and Korea also failed to enjoy a Renaissance, but the continuity of their civilizations and flexibility of their philosophies allowed them to grow and change anyway. Nonetheless, without the arrival of the West, the Far East may never have entertained the thought processes of the modern world. The Renaissance came to the Far East via the West where it enjoyed at least partial acceptance.
Do theologians arguing about God matter? Yes, student of history, they do. As the here and now moved to center stage, the importance of man increased, and the things man could produce increased in importance. Science and the scientific method (much misunderstood) began to pry open the secrets of the universe. Advances in machines, art, writing, printing, building, and many more areas became common. The idea that life could get better, people could reduce pain, control crops, and do better than the ancients took hold. Once the idea of progress was established, the West never looked back. It is not that Western Europe rejected God; it was that Western Europe saw God in a new way. God was not against progress or science or thinking for oneself. The Bible was not intended to control every situation in life. Believe in God, but work for the here and now, was the new mind-set in Europe. Using these beliefs, the secular and spiritual worlds separated in Europe with tremendous implications for the world. Because Islam missed the shock of Renaissance, it failed to scrutinize its religious teachings, failing to acknowledge man might have more importance than believed.
Europe discovered the giants of antiquity.[59] The discovery of Aristotle, Cicero, Plato and other great writers and thinkers of Rome and Greece, fueled an explosion of new ideas in Europe. Painters discovered oil paint, canvas, and perspective with stunning results that left the ancients behind them. Masterpieces of sculpture and painting turned out by Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, and others are beyond compare. Most of these artistic giants were contemporaries which makes all this even more amazing. Not since the glory days of ancient Athens had the world witnessed such an outpouring of talent, inventiveness, and creativity.
The advance to the modern world had just begun, but the speed of progress accelerated beyond all measure. From 1300 to 1500, the world of the peasant saw little change; but from these foundations, the world would witness amazing developments. A person alive in 1910, for example, could watch the world go from horses to motor cars to landing on the moon in about sixty years. Look around your world and remember it all started in Italy about seven hundred years ago.
The key was a new outlook for the human mind. Once released, the avalanche of progress was unstoppable. The dazzling accomplishments of the Western world are unequaled anywhere so far, but these advances upset the remainder of the planet. A backlash is underway in the twenty-first century challenging the quantum leap forward brought about by the Renaissance and the scientific method (empirical method).